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FLORA E FAUNA ESTREMA O PEROCOLOSA
La natura ci da una vasta gamma di creature orribili da cui possiamo trarre ispirazione. E se piante ostili iniziassero a crescere un habitat differenti? (A causa della globalizzazione che permettono ai semi di arrivare lontano, e a causa dei cambiamenti climatici che permettono alle piante di colonizzare ambienti che prima erano impossibili). Can frogs survive being frozen?: Warm weather brings thoughts of spring peepers and leaping bull frogs. But what happens to frogs in the winter? '''If they can’t dig down far enough into the soil to avoid the ice or aren’t lucky enough to live in warmer climates, '''some actually freeze. Fortunately for them, they don’t freeze to death: Most survive to mate another spring. There are five known species of freeze-tolerant frogs in North America, including the well-studied wood frog, as well as Cope’s gray tree frog, the eastern gray tree frog, spring peepers and the western chorus frog. In the fall, these frogs bury themselves under the leaves on the forest floor — but not deeply enough to escape the icy fingers of Jack Frost. Frogs are “cold blooded” (or more precisely, ectothermic), so their body temperature closely tracks the temperature around them. Temperatures have to dip slightly below 32 degrees Fahrenheit '(0°C) 'to freeze a frog, and ice begins to grow when an ice crystal touches the frog’s skin. Like falling dominoes, the ice triggers a cascade of particles that form as the temperature drops. But these amphibians don’t just turn into a block of ice. A chain of events occurs to protect the freezing frog. Minutes after ice starts to form in the skin, a wood frog’s liver begins converting sugars, stored as glycogen, into glucose. This sugar is released from the liver and carried through the bloodstream to every tissue where it helps keep cells from completely dehydrating and shrinking. As the wood frog is freezing, its heart continues pumping the protective glucose around its body, but the frog’s heart slows and eventually stops. All other organs stop functioning. The frog doesn’t use oxygen and actually appears to be dead. In fact, if you opened up a frozen frog, the organs would look like "beef jerky" and the frozen water around the organs like a "snow cone," says Jon Costanzo, a physiological ecologist at Miami University in Ohio who studies freeze-tolerance. When in its frogcicle state, as much as 70 percent of the water in a frog’s body can be frozen, write researchers Jack Layne and Richard Lee in their 1995 article in Climate Research. Frogs can survive all winter like this, undergoing cycles of freezing and thawing. If it gets too cold, though, they’ll die. Frogs in Ohio, in Costanzo’s neck of the woods, can survive about 24 degrees F '(-5°C)'. But frogs farther north can live through lower temperatures. When the weather gets warmer, the frog melts. "The frog has to go through a repair process," says Costanzo. It can be sluggish when it first thaws out, and its body needs to replace some damaged cells. Scientists, however, aren’t sure what tells the heart to start beating. Researchers are still studying this and the mechanisms that protect the frog, aside from glucose. Urea, a waste that frogs get rid of in their urine, was recently shown to help them survive freezing. And proteins may bind to the inside and outside of the cells to keep them from shrinking too much, suggests Kenneth Storey, a professor of biochemistry at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, who also studies freeze-tolerance. While humans aren’t going to survive being frozen any time soon, Storey does say that studying these methods may help preserve human organs longer for transplantation. "We’re on the edge of what you might call nature’s mechanism of transplants," he says. Fonte: http://www.livescience.com/32175-can-frogs-survive-being-frozen.html Three Sisters (Polyculture): tipo di interazioni potrebbero scaturire tra piante così particolari? The Native Americans planted corn, beans and squash together so that they would benefit eachother. The corn provides a structure for the beans to climb. The beans provide the nitrogen to the soil that the other plants utilize, and the squash spreads along the ground preventing weeds. Permaculture is a branch of ecological design, ecological engineering, and environmental design that develops sustainable architecture and self-maintained agricultural systems modeled from natural ecosystems. Fonte: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Sisters_%28agriculture%29 Fonte: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyculture Fonte: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permaculture Extreme heterozygotes (Zygosity): essere una scusa per motivare piante così diverse apparse all'improvviso nell'ecosistema. If you plant an apples seed, the resulting tree will not produce the same kinds of apples. In fact, they will taste significantly different and may be unsuitable for human consumption. Fonte: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple#Breeding Fonte: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zygosity Fungi discovered in the Amaziona will eat your plastic (Pestalotiopsis microspora): Polyurethane seemed like it couldn’t interact with the earth’s normal processes of breaking down and recycling material. That’s just because it hadn’t met the right mushroom yet. The Amazon is home to more species than almost anywhere else on earth. One of them, carried home recently by a group from Yale University, appears to be quite happy eating plastic in airless landfills. The group of students, part of Yale’s annual Rainforest Expedition and Laboratory with molecular biochemistry professor Scott Strobel, ventured to the jungles of Ecuador. The mission was to allow "students to experience the scientific inquiry process in a comprehensive and creative way." The group searched for plants, and then cultured the microorganisms within the plant tissue. As it turns out, they brought back a fungus new to science with a voracious appetite for a global waste problem: polyurethane. The common plastic is used for everything from garden hoses to shoes and truck seats. Once it gets into the trash stream,' it persists for generations'. Anyone alive today is assured that their old garden hoses and other polyurethane trash will still be here to greet his or her great, great grandchildren. Unless something eats it. The fungi, Pestalotiopsis microspora, is the first anyone has found to survive on a steady diet of polyurethane alone and--even more surprising--do this in an anaerobic (oxygen-free) environment that is close to the condition at the bottom of a landfill. Student Pria Anand recorded the microbe’s remarkable behavior and Jonathan Russell isolated the enzymes that allow the organism to degrade plastic as its food source. The Yale team published their findings in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology late last year concluding the microbe is "a promising source of biodiversity from which to screen for metabolic properties useful for bioremediation." I'n the future, our trash compactors may simply be ''giant fields of voracious fungi.' Who knows what the students in the rainforest will turn up next? '''Fonte': http://www.fastcoexist.com/1679201/fungi-discovered-in-the-amazon-will-eat-your-plastic Chorioactis (devil's cigar): Chorioactis is a genus of fungus that contains the single species Chorioactis geaster; the mushroom is commonly known as the devil's cigar or the Texas star in the United States, while in Japan it is called kirinomitake. This extremely rare mushroom is notable for its unusual appearance and disjunct distribution: it is found only in select locales in Texas and Japan. Fruit body opening can be accompanied by a distinct hissing sound and the release of a smoky cloud of spores. The specific epithet geaster alludes to its superficial resemblance to members of genus Geastrum, which also open to form star-shaped fruit bodies commonly called "earthstars". In the United States, Chorioactis geaster is commonly known as the Texas star, or the devil's cigar. Regarding the origin of the latter name American mycologist Fred Jay Seaver commented: "Whether the name Devil's Cigar refers to the form of the young specimens which resemble a bloated cigar in form, as well as in color, or to the fact that the fungus appears to "smoke" at maturity, we cannot say ... At any rate, the name is very appropriate." Dehiscence is accompanied by the release of clouds of spores resembling dust; the characteristic shape of the unopened fruit body, as well as the smoky spore release give the fungus its common name "Devil's cigar". The spore puffing upon rupture is thought to be caused by the sudden change in relative humidity between the interior chamber of the fruit body and the outside environment. Dehiscence is accompanied by a hissing sound, an auditory phenomenon known to occur in about fifteen'' other fungal species'. The so-called '''anamorphic' or imperfect fungi are those that seem to lack a sexual stage in their life cycle, and typically reproduce by the process of mitosis in structures called conidia. Two (or''' more) names for''' one and the same organisms, one based on the teleomorph, the other(s) restricted to the anamorph. Connection between C. geaster and the appearance of blackish-brown tufted structures on rotting wood. By comparing the internal transcribed spacer region of the nuclear ribosomal DNA from the two organisms, they established a phylogenetic connection between Chorioactis and the fungus they called Conoplea aff. elegantula. The fungus's natural habitat in Japan is disappearing because of the practice of deforestation and replanting with Japanese cedar (Cryptomeria japonica). Although the species is considered rare due to its globally restricted distribution, it may be locally abundant in Texas. Although it is not known definitively, Chorioactis is believed to be saprobic, deriving nutrients from decomposing organic matter. In Texas, fruit bodies are found growing singly or in groups from roots, stumps, and dead roots of cedar elm trees (Ulmus crassifolia) or Symplocos myrtacea; in Japan, the usual host is dead oak trees. In Texas, fruit bodies usually appear between October and April, as this period is associated with somewhat cooler weather, and the temperature and moisture conditions during this time seem to be more favorable for growth. Scientists do not know why the fungus mysteriously lives only in Texas and Japan, locations of approximately the same latitude, but separated by 11,000 km (6,800 mi). Fred Jay Seaver commented "this is only another illustration of the unusual and unpredictable distribution of many species of the fungi. It would be difficult indeed to account for it, and '''''we merely accept the facts as they are." In 2004, a research s'tudy compared the DNA sequences' of both populations and used a combination of molecular phylogenetics and molecular clock calculations to estimate the extent of genetic divergence. It concluded that the two populations h'ave been separated for at least nineteen million years', ruling out the possibility of human introduction of the species from one location to the other. Although there are no consistent differences in morphology between the two populations, there are several differences in their life histories. The preferred host of Texan populations is typically roots and stumps of Ulmus crassifola, while the Japanese populations tend to grow on the fallen trunks of Symplocos myrtaceae and Quercus gilva. Texan species grow in''' areas subjected to periodic flooding', unlike their Japanese counterparts. Finally, only '''Japanese' specimens can be grown in culture—the spores of Texan material have not been successfully germinated on artificial media. Fonte: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chorioactis Paulownia tomentosa (Empress tree): In Japan the devil's cigar mushroom is called kirinomitake, because the immature, unopened fruit body bears some resemblance to the seed pods of kiri, the Empress tree (Paulownia tomentosa). Paulownia tomentosa (common names empress tree, princess tree or foxglove tree) is a deciduous tree in the family Paulowniaceae, native to central and western China, but invasive in the USA. Paulownia tomentosa can survive wildfire because the roots can regenerate new, very fast-growing stems. It is tolerant of pollution and it is not fussy about soil type. For this reason it functions ecologically as a pioneer plant. Its nitrogen-rich leaves provide good fodder and its roots prevent soil erosion. Eventually, Paulownia is succeeded by taller trees that shade it. It cannot thrive in the shade of other trees. The soft, lightweight seeds were commonly used as a packing material by Chinese porcelain exporters in the 19th century, before the development of polystyrene packaging. Packing cases would often leak or burst open in transit and scatter the seeds along rail tracks. This, together with seeds released by specimens deliberately planted for ornament, has allowed the species to become an invasive weed tree in areas where the climate is suitable for its growth, notably Japan and the eastern United States. Fonte: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paulownia_tomentosa Hura crepitans (Sandbox tree): (DA APPROFONDIRE) Hura crepitans (syn. Hura brasiliensis Wild.), the Sandbox tree, also known as Possumwood and Jabillo, is an evergreen tree of the spurge family (Euphorbiaceae), native to tropical regions of North and South America, including the Amazon Rainforest. It is recognized by the many dark, pointed spines and smooth brown bark. These spines have caused it to be called Monkey no-climb. Fonte: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hura_crepitans Bizzare Mushrooms: ( DA APPROFONDIRE) Fonte: http://oddstuffmagazine.com/13-bizzare-mushrooms-from-around-the-world.html Fonte: http://pamudurthi.blogspot.it/2011/10/top-10-most-unique-mushroom.html